If you haven’t noticed a theme around here, we’ve had a grand total of three birthdays just in our house in the last two weeks! Today marks the first birthday of our fourth little sweetie, Canaan. I cannot believe a year has gone by, and what a year it has been! Many people have asked me if I know how to throw a cheap birthday party- and the answer is YES!
We combined his party with Evie’s third birthday, and that made things SO much more manageable around this November-birthday house! I decided early on it would be low stress, inexpensive, NOT at my house, but most of all, fun! While I do dearly love Pinterest (and am attending a Pinterest party next month!), a three and one-year-old will not care if they had a perfect venue, beautiful decorations, and amazing party favors. As long as there is cake and the people they love, they will be perfectly happy!
1.) I decided that I would have the party at a park that we love. We didn’t have to rent a pavilion or anything, we just showed up, pulled a few picnic tables together close to one of the playgrounds, added a few balloons, and enjoyed! It was truly the least-stressed I’ve EVER been before, during and after the party. The most stressful part was getting the balloons from Party City, but that’s another story for another day!
Cost: free
2.) I made the invitations using the collage feature of PicMonkey. I have the paid version, but there are plenty of ways to use it for free! (It’s how I edit all of my pictures for the blog- many of you have asked.)
A 4×6 print costs 13 cents at Sam’s Club, and I had 20 of them printed there. I passed out the invites instead of mailing them, which saved on postage. (Although I forgot to mail my parents’, sister’s, and brother-in-law’s family’s cards- sorry guys!)
Cost: Around $3
3.) While making your own cake does add time to the equation, it can be fun and it saves money. A themed cake at a grocery store costs around $25-$30, and I spent about $11. (two cake mixes, 99 cents each, 2 bars of cream cheese for the icing, 99 cents each, bag of m&m’s, $3, package of blue candy melts $3, and cupcake wrappers $1. I already had marshmallows for the minions, yellow candy melts, cupcake wrappers, powdered sugar and butter for the icing.)
And in all actuality, it takes two trips to the store to get a cake- one to pick it out/order it, and one to pick it up, so it doesn’t save that much time after all!
I found the marshmallow minions on Pinterest actually, and that was the most time-consuming part of the party planning. But Evie helped me make them and they were fun! I also made a separate cake that was filled with m&m’s- yummy!
Other than that, we just had simple snacks of pretzels, chips, juice boxes, and sodas.
Cost: cake/cupcakes $11
plates/napkins/chips/drinks $20
4.) When you have the party at the park, most of the entertainment is taken care of. For kids- especially those under the age of 5 or 6- having a playground and lots of room to roam is enough to keep them happy and busy!
The only other planned activity we did was a piñata. My mom gave this one to me, but using a 40% off coupon at Hobby Lobby you can get one for around $7. We stocked up on candy after Halloween, paying as low as 20 cents a package! The candy, along with balloons, served as the party favors. When my kids end up with typical party favors, they usually end up in the trash anyway, so I didn’t want to load other parents down with the same!
Cost: piñata- free
candy- $7
balloons- $10
While we have certainly hosted HUGE parties for our children, keeping a smaller guest list cuts down on the cost as well as the overwhelming aspect of it. For Landon’s first birthday, we had at least 75 people in attendance-but he was our first child AND we were so thankful he had survived his first year. (you can read more about that here.)
We kept this party to about 20 people, and it was perfect!
Total cost: $51
So not technically under $50, but very close! Ben said over and over what a fun party it was, and I think it was mostly because his wife wasn’t stressed and snippy the whole time!
Do you enjoy throwing parties for your kids? Do you go big or small?
Linking up: Living Well, Spending Less
About Kelli Hays
We also have a lot of birthdays in November and December so I really love seeing inexpensive fun birthday ideas! I love making birthday invitations on PicMonkey, too! I’ll be pinning this! Glad I stopped by from Thrifty Thursday!
Thanks so much Carrie! It’s fun having lots of birthdays but can get expensive too! 🙂
Around my area (Tampa Bay) you can’t just go to a park and use tables for parties. They rent them out for 20-50 bucks. If you show up and use them and people that have rented them show up you could end up with the cops called and fined. It still with the 20 bucks is cheaper than the majority of places to have a party and less mess. I would recommend people to research for their area if they need to do anything to use the tables.